South Korean flag carrier Korean Air Lines Co. offers to share its routes with rivals at home and abroad for regulatory favor to see through the merger with Asiana Airlines Inc. and create a monopoly in full-services air transport.

Korean Air Lines in its press release on Monday said it has been making all-out efforts to persuade six antitrust authorities n the U.S., the European Union, and China to bless its integration after winning conditional approval from domestic Fair Trade Commission in February.

The M&A must be cleared by the European Union, Japan and China. An approval from the U.K. and Australia is not mandatory.

Korean Air Lines said antitrust agencies in the four primary markets are demanding more airliners on its service routes to maintain similar level of competition after the merger of two full-service carriers. To satisfy the demands, its top executives now are visiting rivalry companies to persuade them to expand service on its routes, Korean Air added.

For faster approval, the Korean airline formed five teams consisting of about 100 experts to target each country. It has partnered with three global law firms and eight local law firms and hired three economic analysis firms and two professional advisory companies. Up to March this year, about 35 billion won ($27.6 million) has been spent on consulting and advisory fees.

Korean Air has handed in self remedial actions and M&A related documents usually demanded in the second request.

In the European Union, the company has held preliminary negotiation to explain the background and purpose of the marriage in January last year and is discussing self remedial actions to shorten the review period.

For approval from China, Korean Air has submitted supplementary data about 10 times since it filed an application in January last year. It is done with filing at Japan, the U.K. and Australia.

Korean Air Lines emphasized that its tie-up with Asiana Airlines is the only way to normalize the aviation industry, maintain and increase related jobs, enhance the country’s industrial and logistics competitiveness and improve the customer convenience.

It plans to argue that countries with two full-service carriers usually have a population of over 100 million with domestic flights making up half of passenger demand and big gross domestic product, which is not the case for South Korea.

By Pulse

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